De Forest. "Now is the winter of our discontent. Bad, bad, Jimmy. I'm playing Buckingham in Richard at fifteen a week. But, anon, what cheer with you?"

James. "Hippopotamus in the Tin Hippopotamus at two hundred. Come and dine with me."

In this Harper’s Weekly cartoon by Albert Sterner, a
conversation between a Vaudevillian performer and a Shakespearean actor
offers a revealing glimpse into the transformation of the American stage
in the nineteenth century.

The plays of William Shakespeare were acclaimed in his own
Elizabethan England, but lost favor over the next two centuries. They
revived in popularity in the late-eighteenth century, and continued
gaining force during the nineteenth century, a time in which esteem for
Shakespeare reached almost cult-like status.

In the United States, Shakespeare’s plays were performed coast to
coast, in large cities, small towns, isolated mining camps, and wherever
an audience could be found. In the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville, the
famed French chronicler of American society, was surprised to find that
Shakespeare was performed in "the recesses of the forests of the
New World." On the east coast, about one-fifth of any theater’s
seasonal offerings were Shakespearean plays. In the Midwest from 1800 to
1840, Shakespeare’s plays were more frequently staged than those of
any other dramatist. After mid-century, the Bard’s works were produced
with as much regularity in the Great Plains and the Far West.

The audiences were not merely the educated and wealthy, but spanned
class, ethnic, and other dividing lines. At each performance, the
Shakespeare play was the centerpiece, but it was paired with a short
farce and interspersed between acts with various other popular
entertainment, such as juggling, gymnastics, dancing, or singing of
popular tunes. This was not a combination of high and popular culture;
Shakespeare was entertainment for all Americans during much of the
nineteenth century. The plots, characters, famous lines, and morals of
his plays were widely known and understood. So much so that it allowed
his work to be parodied in other venues.

Pictorial and textual references to Shakespearean plays appear
repeatedly in the Harper’s Weekly cartoons of Thomas Nast. In
Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn (1884), the humor in a burlesque
of Hamlet at a small Mississippi River town depends on the
believability of its locale and the audience’s familiarity with the
material. Spoofs of the plays abounded, such as the Bad Dicky
version of Richard III. Shakespearean allusions were incorporated
into popular songs and minstrel jokes, such as: "When was Desdemona
like a ship? When she was Moored."

In the second-half, and especially the last-quarter, of the
nineteenth century, Shakespeare became gradually disconnected from
popular culture and associated with high culture. In 1849, a riot
erupted at Astor Place Opera House in New York City when working-class
fans of Edwin Forrest, the first American-born actor to attain world
renown as a Shakespearean actor, halted a performance of William
Macready with jeers and projectiles. The British-born Macready, whose
style was more intellectual and aristocratic than the emotive Forrest,
was supported by his upper-crust fans. Police broke up the resulting
melee, ending with 22 persons killed and scores wounded. The Astor Place
riot revealed growing class and ethnic tensions in the city and American
theater generally.

In the 1850s and 1860s, some theaters advertised that Shakespeare’s
plays would be performed without an accompanying farce or other
entertainment. In later decades, such explanations were no longer needed
since it was assumed that, in the words of Hamlet, "the play’s
the thing." Consequently, as Shakespeare was sequestered among the
smaller class of well-educated and elite patrons, there were fewer and
fewer performances, and diminishing references in the wider, mass
culture.

These changes in audience type and public awareness are evident in a Harper’s
Weekly cartoon of January 19, 1889, "Readings in Polite
Society." It features an actor (in tuxedo, not costume)
delivering a dramatic reading from Shakespeare to an exclusive,
formally-attired gathering in a posh recital room. Rather than
enthralled by the words, the spectators’ ignorance of the text induces
them to yawn, nap, talk, or otherwise disregard the recitation. The
caption asks, "Do we like Shakespeare?"; and answers
flippantly, "We absolutely dote on him. Splendid old chappie!"
In the same month that the featured cartoon, "The Art of
Acting," appeared (March 1890), American critic A. C. Wheeler
published in Arena magazine a eulogy on "The Extinction of
Shakespeare."

Meanwhile, as the trajectory of Shakespeare was moving from popular
to elite pastime, another type of theater was emerging from
working-class culture to gain mass appeal. In the nineteenth century,
immigrant and working-class men in the Bowery enjoyed variety shows
which featured melodramas like Bertha, the Sewing Machine Girl,
physical and vulgar humor, special effects, animal acts, and folk songs.

In 1865, Antonio "Tony" Pastor, a former circus clown and
acrobat who had entered show business as a black-face minstrel singer at
age 12, opened a theater in the Bowery. In 1881, he moved his
establishment to Union Square to attract a larger, more prosperous
clientele. Pastor’s innovation was to take the variety-show format,
remove the lewdness, ban alcohol and prostitutes, and promote it as
family entertainment. He named it after a type of French theater,
"vaudeville." It drew large crowds which, like Shakespeare had
earlier, crossed class, ethnic, age, and gender lines. Vaudeville spread
quickly to become the nation’s most popular form of entertainment
until displaced by movies with sound in the 1930s.

In this cartoon, the Shakespearean actor, De Forest (who may be
modeled on the late Edwin Forrest), complains of hard times to his
Vaudevillian counterpart, whose wages are over 13 times higher for
appearing in the "Tin Hippopotamus." De Forest’s extended,
upturned hand is a gesture of supplication to his friend, who then
offers to buy him dinner. De Forest’s Shakespearean prose includes the
opening line of Richard III, which had been the most popular play
in America for decades, but is here meant to sound stilted and out of
place. Richard III killed the rebellious Buckingham, and the latter role
seems to be death to De Forest’s career. Yet, the apparently older
Shakespearean actor stands erect, adorned in somber, dignified dress—top
hat, dark colors, and an umbrella to protect him from the elements
(weather or lower-class).

By contrast, Jimmy the Vaudevillian wears a garish checked suit, with
a casual bowler hat, and jauntily strikes a strut-like pose. He speaks
in a friendly, colloquial manner, as he puffs away on his cigar. He is a
working-class man who has become a popular and financial success. The
use of "Tin" in the play’s title may allude to Tin Pan
Alley, the musical district and genre which were developing in New York
City at the time of this cartoon; or, the title could refer to a type of mechanical bank, "Tin Hippo," popular in the late-nineteenth century. The latter would reinforce the idea that the actor's vaudeville role was lucrative.